“Who have you dreamed about working with the most?” For Claude VonStroke, that person is Bootsy Collins – the biggest personality in Parliament Funkadelic and one of the funniest most memorable funk legends of all time. Today Claude’s dream has come true, and he couldn’t be happier about Bootsy’s recent collaboration with dirtybird to create the lead single of Claude’s second album, “Bird Brain.”
As Rolling Stone put it, Bootsy Collins’ Rubber Band was the most entertaining and longest-running spin-off of George Clinton’s eternal P-Funk circus, and that’s because Bootsy is a true star, the clown prince of comic, psychedelic, good-times funk – if he weren’t such a genius of the bass, you’d think he was Jimmie Walker in a sequined costume, star-shaped mirrored shades included. His career is like a Horatio Alger story based in Chocolate City: plucked from teenage obscurity in 1969 to play with James Brown, the former William Collins on Cincinnati brought a slap-happy zest to JB’s sound, then hooked up with Clinton and was reborn in his image, with a little help from LSD.
Some may wonder what led tech-house label owner, DJ, and producer Claude VonStroke to a man like Bootsy Collins, and the best answer we can provide is the tongue-in-cheek approach to music they share. Here, two very different musical forces find some common, unifying ground, both believing you got to get up for the down stroke and there’s no way to fake the funk or your nose will grow, Pinocchio!
